Naomi Rawlings - The Soldier's Secrets

But safety was a mere illusion. No one was ever truly safe from Alphonse Dubois.

“Come in.” The planes and edges of the guard’s face glinted hard in the dim light radiating from inside. He was huge, taller than her by nearly half a mètre and powerful enough to fell her with the club hanging at his side. Her eyes drifted down to the massive hand gripping the door, and she took a step back.

“That’s the wrong direction, wench. And Alphonse doesn’t like to wait.” The guard’s knuckles bulged around his club.

“Of course.” She spoke easily, as though her body wasn’t trembling. As though her lungs didn’t refuse to draw breath at the idea of stepping over the threshold.

“I said move.” The man yanked her inside.

The door slammed behind her, its bang resonating through the packed warehouse. Gone was the grimy smell of coal smoke and familiar taste of the sea that permeated the streets of Calais. Aromas sweet like chocolate, tangy like salt and smooth like tobacco wrapped themselves around her.

Crates towered high, leaving only a narrow pathway through which to walk. Labels marked the sides of each and every box: silk from Lyons, and lace from Alençon and Arras, Dieppe and Le Puy. Tea from India, cocoa and cigars from the Caribbean. Sea salt from the Île de Ré, and more barrels of brandy than one could imagine. All sat stacked one atop the other in endless columns.

The contents of the single warehouse were worth a fortune in any land. But with France and England at war, Alphonse would reap even greater sums for his illegal French goods once his men smuggled them onto the English market. The trade materials like tea and chocolate and cigars would arrive on British shores under cover of darkness and away from the greedy eyes of the king’s excise agents, bringing yet more profit to the smuggler.

And Alphonse had warehouses like this scattered through half of northern France.

“This way.” A hot hand clamped around the back of her neck and shoved her forward, weaving her in an interminable maze toward the center of the warehouse.

When the crates finally stopped, she stood in a small open area in the middle of the warehouse.

With Alphonse Dubois looking on, seated dead in the center of his smuggling empire.

Heir to a seigneury by birth, he wielded more power now than an inheritance ever would have given him. All of Calais knew his story, though she knew it better than most. He was a firstborn son who hadn’t been content to accept the lands handed down for centuries, nor had he wanted to make do with his family’s dwindling coffers. So rather than sitting in his chateau and watching as it crumbled about him while he ran through his precious few ancestral funds, he’d gone off and gotten himself rich.

Illegally.

Now Alphonse had as much money as England’s king himself—and just as much power in a town such as Calais.

“Brigitte.” The thin blade of his voice sliced through the air. “How pleasant to see you.”

As though he’d given her a choice, as though earlier this afternoon he hadn’t sent two of his henchmen to her house and summoned her while her children watched.

He studied her through eyes yellow with age, that putrid amber and the pale pink tint to his lips the only colors in a face otherwise gray as stone. “Sit.”

It had come to this then, time for him to issue orders and her to defy him. Did he see the way her hands trembled? The fear that threatened to burst from her chest in a sob?

“I prefer to stand, mer—”

The guard shoved her forward, and she nearly toppled into the table. “A defiant one, she is. You can see it in her eyes.” He planted both hands on her shoulders, forcing her down until she crumpled into the chair.

Alphonse’s pink-tinged lips curved into a cruel smile. “You’re dismissed, Gerard.”

The guard moved back against the crates to stand beside another man, equally as muscular and thick of chest, and carrying another large club.

Alphonse took a sip of steaming liquid from a mug beside his hand, then reached for a sweet biscuit sitting on the table. He wore gray as always, the color matching his silver-tinted hair and aging skin. The monotonous color palate created an image more akin to a corpse then a living, breathing man.

“I hear you plan to leave Calais.”

He’d found out.

She clutched her shawl against the base of her throat.

“Foolish woman.” His eyes hardened into two frigid stones. “Did you think I’d let you steal my grandchildren away in the night?”

She hadn’t a choice. He’d suck her children into the smuggling business if she didn’t leave. Julien and Laurent were safe in the navy for now, but what of Danielle and Serge at home? How young did boys start running messages for Alphonse? Seven? Eight? Could Alphonse take Serge even now? And as for Danielle...

Brigitte swallowed, the type of work available to a girl in this industry too unbearable to imagine.

“No one leaves my employ without permission,” he snapped.

“I’m not in your employ and never have been.”

Something calculating and methodical moved behind his eyes. “No, you’re family.”

She cringed at the word. “My husband’s dead. That eliminates any connection between you and I.”

“It would, had I not five grandchildren whom you keep from me.”

“With Henri dead, the children belong to me, and I’ll not allow you to employ them in your wretched schemes. I’m not my husband.”

“No, you most certainly are not.” Alphonse ran his eyes slowly down her, his gazing lingering until revulsion flooded her body. “You claim you want to leave Calais, and let’s say, just for the moment, that you have the money and means to do so. What do you intend to do? Where do you intend to go?”

To Reims. To my family.

She’d never be free of him if she said such things. He’d track her down and find her, taking her two oldest sons when they came home from the navy. Or he’d tell her she’d need to house his men and store his goods when one of his minions was in the area.

“Did you know, Brigitte, I have a rather marvelous memory?” He watched her through those hard, death-colored eyes. “It helps when one runs a business such as this.”

A business? He spoke as though his smuggling success was some legitimate form of trade.

“For example, I seem to recall when you and my son first met. You were living in Reims, were you not? Acting as a governess?”

“I...” He couldn’t remember where she came from and who her family was. Wouldn’t use them as threats.

“I remember well, but every so often my mind fails me.” He snapped his fingers, and one of the guards stepped forward, a sheaf of papers in hand. “I’ve learned to take excellent notes, you understand.” He took the papers from the guard and flipped through them. “Ah, yes, everything is here. You’re the niece of a seigneur, and your elder sister married a seigneur’s third son. Your father has passed on, but your mother apparently maintains good health and resides in your childhood home. I wonder how your mother and sister have fared, what with the Révolution and all.”

She gripped the edge of the table, her nails digging into the aged wood. “How dare you.”

“When my informants tell me you plan to leave Calais, that you hide away money and slowly pack your things, I ask myself, where might my dear daughter-in-law go? And why might she go there? And then it comes to me, where you hailed from, who your people are. Then just as I feel a spark of compassion and think that perhaps it’s time for you to return to Reims, I remember my sweet grandchildren. Grandchildren who are useful to me.”

“I won’t let you touch them.”

“I’d always intended for Henri to run my enterprise after I passed on.” He continued on as though her words meant nothing. “’Twas a natural decision, you see, with him being my only son. But now that he’s dead, one of your boys shall have to take over.”